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Jakke Holvas

Jakke Mikael Holvas
Born September 16, 1968, Turku

Master of Arts 1996, PhD 2009 (theoretical philosophy), University of Helsinki

FBC morning TV presenter 2011–13
Host of the FBC Radio Finland current affairs programme Ajantasa and FBC Radio 1 morning programme Ykkösaamu 2008–
Journalist for the TV programme T-Klubi 2006-07, Tarinatalo
Columnist 2004-06, Helsingin Sanomat
Journalist, features and Sunday-edition, 2004-06, Helsingin Sanomat

Member of Lektio, a cooperative specialised in organising lectures and producing articles and columns, 2005–

Photo: Jakke Holvas
Written by Jakke Holvas and Tero Juutilainen (ed.)

Translated by Matthew Billington

Classics and Plans

University got me into the classics. If I read something that isn’t work-related news, it’s almost always the classics. Novelty is a reading criterion I don’t understand, let alone various awards like the Nobel or the Finlandia. There are still plenty of classics I haven’t read. I hunger for them.

The same is true of sociology and philosophy. I make repeated efforts to reduce the size of my bookshelf. I take everything that isn’t a classic to second-hand bookshops. I am looking forward to devouring books such as Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments and Hegel’s Science of Logic.

Fiction is delicious. For example, the works of Charles Baudelaire, Vladimir Nabokov and Marcel Proust. Aesthetically sensitive writing is pleasing. Nothing else really matters.

At the beginning of the 2000s, I wrote a column where I made a promise for my next five books. Quite surprisingly, I have actually written three of them. Of the missing two, one is a collection of essays on non-economics. The other is a fictional novel called Helena, a modern-day story about the cause of the Trojan War.

Helen of Troy. Picture: Gaston Bruissère / Wikimedia Commons.

Perhaps I can’t even write fiction, but I figured I would try. I am trying to convey as much passion as I possibly can in the book. It will of course take years to finish, but I’ll keep studying all that time: I will read Shakespeare and Homer , ha-ha, so that even if the novel never happens, I’ll have another excuse to read the classics.

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